APRIL 1, 2020 – Today, I decided to just chill a bit, not get too ambitious in the crafting. Thankfully, no need to rush out of bed because my wonderful hubby got on his conference call and my eldest took care of the dogs. The youngest made the trip to feed and care for the horse and back just as I was planning to get up.
Of course, when you are laying around trying to enjoy the day you know something has to happen to ruin it! My stomach was growling! But, I had to forget the stomach because our new neighbor rang the doorbell – yeah that was the ‘ruin it’ moment. They informed us that their vehicles were broken into last night. Of course, I heard it and immediately remembered the year we had a light bar stolen off our Jeep, 4 years ago! Seems 4 years ago was a bad year for us! I also felt a sudden wave of anger course through my veins.
Anyway, hubby began reviewing cameras and found the punk on camera around 3am. Luckily, nothing was taken and only one car got his attention. Police won’t respond because there was nothing taken and no one hurt.
I made my way to the shower. Thinking the whole time that had this been the other night I would have potentially seen them on camera. It is a really eerie feeling knowing your personal space was violated like that. Even worse, we slept through it. False sense of security once you are in the safety of your own home. It hit me, we have a dash cam in the car next to the one they got into. There was bound to be a good close up on that camera. So I hurry out of the shower and announce my news. I totally forgot about my stomach growling.
Folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine how much worse it will get if folks continue to be forced to be out of work and stuck at home. They get itchy for stuff and they have to go out into the wild blue yonder and pilfer through other’s things. I bet this teenager has done this before. The dash cam footage was reviewed and miraculously this teenager must have dropped in via drone, because we cannot see the approach to the vehicle. We do seem them walking away after they very carefully and methodically close the drivers door without a sound. They were slender in stature, carrying a flashlight, wearing a light colored hoodie, dark tennis shoes, jeans, light complexion and stood about 5’6″ – 5’8″ tall – yes, your average teenager. I refrain from being gender specific because folks these days, I cannot even tell.
I am sitting here now, glancing at the cameras over my screen as I type. It is just minutes before 3am. I cannot sleep. I know they won’t return to the scene since they got nothing the first time, but a part of me wants them to. I also suspect they would in an attempt to get something from one of the other cars in our driveway. There was a suspicious vehicle that was caught around the same time. Distinctive headlights in the camera. I’m looking for that car to pass by again.
Moments after I typed that, a strange vehicle came from the back of the neighborhood, made a circle through our court and returned to the back of the neighborhood. It looked like it turned around there and passed back by our house around 3am on the dot! If that is the same vehicle…it could be involved. There might be other cars being targeted as I type this and I feel helpless, angry and violated.
Well, this is probably totally unrelated to the pandemic but one has to wonder…if a teenager was in school would they have time on their hands to rifle through others’ cars at 3am? Hope not. You can’t help but wonder though. Perhaps this pandemic has them all out of whack and bored. After sleeping all day, they figured getting out in the middle of the night was their answer for beating the boredom. If they scored some loot it was icing on the cake.
Normally our cars are locked and getting in them wouldn’t be as easy as it was for them last night. This particular car was in the shop a few weeks ago for some factory ‘recall’ work and our suspicion is that they reset the ‘auto lock’ features when they were working on it and we did not check it upon return to us. Assuming was wrong and you can bet it was corrected today. We also took a few other measures. I have a sneaky suspicion that we are going to see more things like this happening as this lockdown drags on. You can bet, I WILL protect my family and belongings to the best of my ability…if I have to sleep during the day and stay up all night to do it…..
On another note; today’s craft attempt was another bobble. I decided that since I have to order more emulsion and potentially screens, I would put screen printing back on the drawing board. I dove into something I know VERY well. Heat printing i.e. heatpressing. It started out fine. My artwork I did for screen printing easily converted over for cutting and cut out great. Sadly, I lack a good supply of heat pressing vinyl so my scrap stash was limited. I managed to get a few things cut and my new heat press machine was cranked up and tested. I pressed one thing and it turned out great!! I was on a roll. So I pushed my luck and attempted to do some more. After all, this is the job I would NORMALLY be doing if work was in session and things were normal. It’s not uncharted territory for me. The second press proved me wrong. I used a cover sheet but I guess the vinyl I pressed the first time didn’t like the excessive heat the second vinyl needed and it melted and began peeling off the shirt. So I took that as my sign to just STOP. I will work on supplies instead of scraps before I attempt this again. It just isn’t in the cards for me to do right now. I am proud that I was able to use photoshop to do what I have been doing in CorelDraw. Being self taught in this industry comes with mistakes and I know that some vinyl is sensitive to certain temperatures – I just got over zealous and pushed my luck. I know that and I will bounce back.
For now, let’s put this day behind us and move on.
Here’s to another day on lockdown!
CLIMB ABOARD MY SOAPBOX 